by Mary Stewart
I went into the stillroom. As I busied myself mixing the cordial I had only one thought in my mind. He, sitting reading and thinking, had had vision brought to him in a dewdrop's spark of light; I, waiting idly and with passive mind in full sunlight, had seen nothing. I found that my hand shook a little as I poured the cordial for him; it would take love, I thought, to stand peacefully aside and watch the god lift his wing from over me, and take another into its shadow. No matter that the power had brought pain and men's fear and sometimes hatred; no one who has known power like that has any wish to abdicate it to another. Not to anyone.
I carried the goblet out into the sunlight. Ninian, still curled on the flagstones, had his head down, a fist pressed tightly against his brow. He looked very slight and young. He raised his head at my step, and the grey eyes, swimming with tears of pain, looked at me blindly. I sat down, took his hand in mine, and guided the goblet to his mouth. "Drink this. It will make you feel better presently. No, don't try to talk yet."
He drank, then his head went down again, this time against my knee. I laid a hand on his hair. For some time we sat like that, while the doves, disturbed by his coming, flew down again onto the coping of the wall, and once more took up their gentle courtship. Beyond the stables the monotonous sound of Varro's spade went on and on.
Presently Ninian stirred.
I lifted my hand. "Better?"
He nodded and raised his head. The lines of pain had gone. "Yes. Yes, it's quite gone. It was more than a headache; it was like a sharp pain right through the brain. I've never felt anything like that before. Am I ill?"
"No. You are merely a seer, an eye and a voice for a most tyrannous god. You have had a waking dream, what men call a vision. Now tell me about it, and we shall see if it is a true one."
He drew his knees up, clasping them with both hands. He spoke, looking past me at the wall with the black branches and red cups of the quince. His eyes were still dark, dilated with vision, and his voice was low and even, as if reciting something learned by rote.
"I saw a stretch of grey sea, whipped with storm winds, breaking white over rocks like wolves' fangs. There was a beach of pebbles, grey too, and streaming with rain. The waves came in over the beach, and with them came broken spars and casks and torn sails — pieces of wreckage. And people; drowned bodies of men and women. One of the men's bodies rolled near me, and I saw he had not been drowned; there was a deep wound in his neck, but the blood had all been washed away by the sea. He looked like an animal that has been bled. There were dead children, too, three of them. One was naked, and had been speared. Then I saw, out beyond the breakers, another ship, a whole ship, with sails furled in the wind, and with oars out, holding her steady. She waited there, and I saw that she was low in the water as if heavily laden. She had a high, curved prow, with a pair of antlers fastened to it; I couldn't see if they were real, or carved in wood. I could see her name, though; it was King Stag. The men in the ship were watching the bodies tumbling on shore, and they were laughing. They were a long way off across the sea, but I could hear what they said, quite clearly...Can you believe that?"
"Yes. Go on."
"They were saying,’You were guided, by God! Who could have told that the old scow was so richly found? Luck like yours, and a fair division of the spoils, and we'll all make our fortunes!' They were speaking to the captain."
"Did you hear his name?"
"I think so. They called him Heuil."
"Was that all?"
"No. There was a sort of darkness, like a mist. Then the King Stag had gone, but near me on the shore there were horsemen, and some of them had dismounted and were looking at the bodies. One man lifted a piece of broken planking with something on it that might have been the name of the wrecked ship, and carried it across to where another was sitting on his horse. He was a dark man, carrying no device that I could see, but he was obviously their leader. He looked angry. He said something, and the others got to their horses again, and they all galloped up off the beach, through the dunes and the long grasses. I was left there, and then even the dead bodies were gone, and the wind was blowing into my eyes and making them water...That was all. I was looking at the spider's web, and the drops had melted in the sunlight. A fly was caught there, shaking the web. I suppose that was what woke me. Merlin —"
He stopped abruptly, and cocked his head to listen. Now I could catch, from the road below, the sounds of a troop of horsemen, and a distant command to halt. A single rider detached himself, and approached at a rapid canter.
"A messenger from Camelot?" I said. "Who knows, perhaps this is your vision coming home."
The horse stopped. There was the jingle of the bridle being thrown to Varro. Arthur came in through the archway.
"Merlin, I'm glad to see you about. They told me you had been ill, and I came to see for myself." He paused, looking at Ninian. He knew, of course, that the boy was with me, but they had not met before. Ninian had refused to go with me to Camelot, and whenever the King had visited me, had made some excuse and retired to his rooms. I did not press him, knowing the awe that the people of theLake villages felt for the High King.
I was on my feet, just beginning, "This is Ninian," when the boy himself interrupted me. He came to his feet in one swift movement, as fast as a snake uncurling, and cried out:
"That's the man! That's the one! It was a true dream then, it was true!"
Arthur's brows shot up, not, I knew, at the lack of ceremony, but at the words. He looked from Ninian back to me. "A true dream?" He said it softly. He knew the phrase of old.
I heard Ninian gasp as, through the dregs of the vision, he came back to the present. He stood there blinking, like someone thrust suddenly into bright light. "It's the King. So it was the King."
Arthur said, sharply now: "So what was the King?"
Ninian, flushing, began to stammer. "Nothing. That is, I was just talking to Merlin. I didn't know you at first. I —"
"Never mind. You know me now. What is this about a true dream?"
Ninian looked appealingly at me. Telling me his dream was one thing; making his first prophecy to the King's face was quite another. I said across to him, to the King: "It seems that an old friend of yours is indulging in piracy, or some villainy uncommonly like it, somewhere in his home waters. Murder and robbery, and peaceful traders looted and then wrecked, and no one left alive to tell the story."
He frowned. "An old friend of mine? Who, then?"
"Heuil."
"Heuil?" His face darkened. Then he stood for a few moments in thought. "Yes, it fits. It fits. I had news a while back from Ector, and he said Caw was failing, and that wild brood of his looking around them like idle dogs for something to tear. Then three days ago I heard from Urbgen, my sister's lord in Rheged, of a village on the coast attacked and looted, and the folk killed or scattered. He was inclined to blame the Irish, but I doubted that; the weather's been too rough for anything but local raiding. Heuil, is it? You don't surprise me. Shall I go?"
"It seems you had better. My guess is that Caw is dead, or dying. I can't believe that Heuil would dare, otherwise, to do anything to provoke Rheged."
"Your guess?"
"That is all."
He nodded. "It seems likely. In any case, it will answer very well. I had been almost ready to invent some pretext for a foray to the northward. With Caw's grip slackening, and that black dog Heuil collecting a following that could contest his brother's claim to the rulership of Strathclyde, I would like to be there to see things for myself. Piracy, eh? You did not see where?"
I glanced at Ninian. He shook his head. "No," I said, "but you'll find him. You will be there, on the shore, while the wreckage and the bodies still lie there. The raiders' ship is King Stag. That's all we know. You should be able to fasten the guilt where it belongs."
"I'll do that, never fear." He was grim. "I'll send north to Urbgen and Ector tonight to expect me, and I'll ride myself in the morning. I'm grateful. I've been looking for an exc
use to cut my lord Heuil out of the pack, and now you give me this. It may be just the chance I need to get another agreement ratified between Strathclyde and Rheged, and throw my weight in behind the new king. I don't know how long I shall be away. And you, Merlin? All is really well with you?"
"All is very well."
He smiled. He had not missed the glance that had gone between Ninian and myself. "It seems you have someone to share your visions with, at last. Well, Ninian, I am glad to have met you." He smiled at the boy, and said something kind. Ninian, staring, made some sort of answer. I had been wrong, I saw, about him; he was not awed by the presence of the King, and there was a quality in the way he looked at Arthur, something I could not quite put a name to; none of the worship that I was used to seeing in men's eyes, but a steady appraisal. Arthur saw it, looked amused, then dismissed the boy and turned back to me, asking for messages for Morgan and Ector. Then he said his goodbyes and went.
Ninian looked thoughtfully after him. "Yes, it was a true dream. The dark leader on the white horse, with the white shield shining, and no blazon on it but the light of the sky. It was Arthur beyond doubt. Who exactly is Heuil, and why does the King want an excuse to cut him down?"
"He's one of the sons of Caw of Strathclyde, who has been king on Dumbarton Rock since before I can remember. He's very old, and has sired nineteen sons on various women. There may be daughters, too, but those wild northern men make little of their girls. The youngest of the brood, Gildas, has recently been sent to my old friend Blaise, whom you know of, to learn to read and write. He, at least, will be a man of peace. But Heuil is the wildest of a wild breed. He and Arthur have always disliked one another. They fell out and fought, once, over a girl, when Arthur was a boy in the north country. Since then, with Caw's health failing, the King has seen Heuil as a danger to the balance of peace in the north. He would do anything, I think, to harm Arthur, even ally himself with the Saxons. Or so Arthur believes. But now that Heuil has taken to rapine and murder, he can be hunted down and destroyed, and the greater danger will be averted."
"And the King takes an army north, just like that, on your word?" There was awe in his face now, but not the awe of kings or their counsels. He was, for the first time, feeling the power in himself.
I smiled. "No, on yours. If I seemed to take the credit for the seeing I am sorry. But the matter was urgent, and he might not have believed you as readily."
"Of course not. But you saw it, too?"
"I saw nothing."
He looked startled. "But you believed me straight away."
"Of course. Because I did not share it, it doesn't mean it was not a true dream."
He looked worried, then rather scared. "But, Merlin, do you mean that you knew nothing about this before I told you my dream? I mean, about Heuil's turning pirate...I should say, his intention to turn pirate? That you sent the King off to the north on my word alone?"
"That is what I mean, yes."
A silence, while worry, apprehension, excitement, and then joy showed in his face as clearly as the reflection of light and cloud blowing across the waters of his native lake. He was still taking in the implications of power. But when he spoke he surprised me. Like Arthur, he saw straight past those implications to others, that were my concern, not his. And his next words were an exact echo of Arthur's. "Merlin, do you mind?"
I answered him as simply. "Perhaps. A little, now. But soon, not at all. It's a harsh gift, and perhaps it is time that the god handed it on to you, and left me in peace to sit in the sun and watch the doves on the wall."
I smiled as I spoke, but there was no answering glimmer in his face. He did a strange thing then. He reached for my hand, lifted it to his cheek, then dropped it and went back upstairs to his room without another word or look. I was left standing there in the sun, remembering another, much younger boy, riding downhill from the cave of Galapas, with the visions swirling in his head, and tears on his face, and all the lonely pain and danger hanging in the clouds ahead of him. Then I went indoors to my own room, and read beside the fire till Mora brought the midday meal.
8
Arthur rode out next day for the north, and thereafter we got no more news. Ninian went about the place with a half-dazed look, compounded, I think, of wonder at himself and the "true vision," and at me for not seeming distressed at the way it had passed me by. For myself, I admit I was divided; looking back on that day, I knew that I had been lingering in the edges of the poisoned dream that was my sickness; but even after Arthur's visit and acceptance of Ninian's prophecy, nothing had come to me out of the dark, either of proof or denial. For all that I seemed to feel, in the rich quiet of the days, a tranquil approval. It was like watching a shadow that slowly, as the distant clouds move, withdraws from one field or forest, and passes on to shroud the next. I had been shown, gently enough, where happiness now lay; so I took it, preparing the boy Ninian to be as I had been, and myself for some future half seen and guessed at many times, but now seen more clearly and no longer dreaded, but moved toward, as a beast moves toward its winter sleep.
Ninian, more even than before, seemed to withdraw into himself. On one or two occasions, lying wakeful in the night, I heard him cross the garth soft-footed, and then run, like a young thing released, down the valley to the road. Twice, even, I sought to follow him in vision, but he must have taken care to cloud himself from me, for I saw no farther than the roadway, then the slight figure running, running, into the mist that lay between Applegarth and theIsland. It did not trouble me that he had secrets, any more than it troubled me to hear him and the girl Mora talking — sometimes at great length — in the still-room or the kitchen. I had never counted myself lively company, and with age tended to be even more withdrawn. It only pleased me that the young people should find common interests, and keep each other contented in my service.
For service it was. I worked the boy harder than any slave. This is the way of love, I find; one longs so fervently for the beloved to achieve the best ends that he is spared nothing. And that I loved Ninian there could no longer be any doubt; the boy was myself, and through him I would go on living. As long as the King should need the vision and the power of a King's prophet, he would find it, as ready to his hand as the royal sword.
One evening we built the fire up high against the chill wind of April, and sat beside it, watching the flames. Ninian settled straight down in his usual place, on the rug before the hearth, chin on fist, the grey eyes narrowed against the flames. Gradually, on the fine pale skin, the gleam of sweat showed, a film which caught the firelight and limned his face with a pure line, damping the edges of his hair, and fringing the black lashes with rainbows. I, as lately more and more often, found myself watching him, rather than reaching after my own power. It was a mixture of deep contentment, and a cruelly disturbing love that I made no attempt either to check or to understand. I had learned the lessons of the past; I went with the time, believing that I was master enough of myself and my thoughts to do the boy no harm.
There was a change in his face. Something moved there, a reflection of grief or distress or pain, like something seen faintly in a glass. Sweat was running into his eyes, but he neither blinked nor moved.
It was time I went with him. I stopped watching him, and turned my eyes to the fire.
I saw Arthur straight away. He was sitting his big white horse at the edge of the sea. It was a pebbled strand, and I recognized the crag-fast castle above: Rheged's sea-tower, which commands the Ituna estuary. It was dusk, and the stormy sky piled indigo clouds behind a grey sea lighter than its own horizon. Foam-filled waves dashed down on the stones and raced hissing up the shore, to die in creamy froth and drag back through hissing pebbles. The white stallion stood fast, with the foam swirling round his fetlocks; his splashed and gleaming flanks, and Arthur's grey cloak blown with the horse's mane, looked part of the scene, as if the King had ridden out of the sea.
A man, a peasant by the look of him, was by Arthur's bridle, talking earne
stly, and pointing seaward. The King followed the gesture, then sat straight in the saddle, his hand to his eyes. I saw what he was looking at: a light, far out toward the horizon, tossing with the tossing sea. The King asked a question, and the man pointed again, this time inland. The King nodded, something passed from hand to hand, then he turned his stallion's head and lifted an arm. The white horse went up the sea at a gallop, and through the thickening mists of the vision I could see the troopers pressing after him. Just before the vision faded I saw, at the head of the cliff, lights pricking out in the tower.
I came back to the firelit room to find that Ninian was there before me. He was kneeling, or rather crouching, on the rug, with his head in his hands.
"Ninian?"
No movement but a slight shake of the head. I gave him a moment or two, then reached for the cordial I kept to hand.
"Come. Drink this."
He sipped, and his eyes thanked me, but still he did not speak.
I watched him for a few minutes in silence, then said: "So it seems that the King has reached the shores of the Ituna, and has found out about the pirates. He rests in Rheged's sea-tower, and with morning, I have no doubt, he will be hard on Heuil's tracks. So what is it? Arthur is safe, your vision was true, and he is doing what he set out to do."
Still nothing, but that look of white distress. I said quickly: "Come, Ninian, don't take it to heart so. For Arthur this is a small matter. The only hard thing about it is that he must punish Heuil without offending his brothers; and even that won't be too difficult. It's a long time since Heuil — metaphorically speaking — spat on his father's hearthstone and went out to do his mischiefs in his own way. So even if old Caw is still alive, I doubt if he'll repine; and as for the elder sons, I've no doubt Heuil's death would come as a relief." I added, more sharply: "If it was tragedy you saw, or disaster, it's all the more important to speak of it. Caw's death we expected; whose, then? Morgan, the King's sister? Or Count Ector?" "No." His voice sounded strange, like an instrument meant for music that is blown through by a gritty wind. "I did not see the King at all."